The Atlantic piece was excellent. Right on target. I'm so sick of the trans ideology police. Recently an ACLU agent on the street seeking members was gobsmacked when I said the ACLU is one of the worse homophobic and misogynist forces in America.
Lots of gay men and lesbians say this in private but are too afraid to say it in public for fear of being labelled right-wing. Labelling is a shaming tactic used by people when they run out of arguments. A few days ago, I was discussing illegal immigration with a friend's son and he could not answer my arguments so he suddenly said, "Are you a Trumper?" as if it is impossible to agree with some policies of a government and disagree with others.
The only way to combat that stupidity is to ask why they believe it's better to be on the Left where they're racist, sexist, and believe in cutting the balls off of boys. Lay it out in a Ven diagram and have him write a compare-contrast essay.
Thank you for your excellent writing! Every time I see your name in my inbox I cannot wait to read what you have to say!I wish there was a way to abolish left and right. I am truly independent. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Because I believe in Christ, I have double the amount of friends on the right as I do the left. I can argue down and dirty with my friends on the right and we stay friends. I walk on eggshells with my friends on the left, which is shocking because my only real passionate belief is that we should not medicalize children. We are all born in the right body and we can express ourselves in that body in whatever way we want. You would think that was not political, that telling children to love the body that God gave them, and that they don't have to conform to a stereotype would be a loving thing to believe in. My other passion is no boys in girls sports because that is a giant step backwards for women's rights. I've had people block me for something that is so obviously true that I am willing to admit that I think you have to be stupid to believe boys playing in women's sports would be a good idea. Both of these beliefs, and all those you have expressed are not political. They are common sense beliefs. How can we get back to normal?? Thank you for your voice! I so appreciate you.
I'm similar in many ways -- socially liberal (but not "progressive"), fiscally conservative, politically homeless. I'm not religious, but some of my family are. I have friends and family on both sides of the aisle. I have found, like you, that I can discuss and debate with people on the right, and then we move on. But on the left, you have to be SO careful. Any hint that you don't subscribe to the narrative ends in a complete meltdown, often involving tears and hair-rending and name-calling. It's exhausting. I've determined it's far, far easier to be a semi-liberal amongst conservatives than to be a semi-conservative amongst progressives.
I agree with your assessments and characterizations wholeheartedly. We need more people with the knowledge, courage and critical thinking abilities you're displaying to speak up on this topic from a place of nuance and compassion.
I especially appreciate what you're saying about the plight of parents who have bought into the more extreme tenets of the ideology so thoroughly. I've often thought the same – that it would have to be nearly impossible to allow oneself to acknowledge such a grave mistake after going all in on early medicalization. What a gut-wrenching prospect for all involved.
I’m so sorry - this is a living hell for parents. Our eldest transitioned as an adult, we pushed back very little but as we had zero say or influence over the decision we couldn’t do much, besides advising therapy (we said we would pay, and would do family therapy.) Then when our youngest said she was really a boy, aged 10.5 we did resist and what a nightmare it’s been. We were investigated by child protection, cannot find a therapist (because it is against the law not to affirm a trans identity here) ended up letting her drop out of school because it seemed better than letting her spend all day in an environment where every adult tells her she’s really a boy… it’s not like parental resistance can have much impact once a child is over 12 in jurisdictions where you can lose custody for not affirming and where parental consent is not required if the doctor determines your child has capacity to consent to hormones.
Same here. I simply cannot. I have come to realize I cannot reach her anyways with any kind of reasoning towards her well being with the hold of her mental sanity, her career, or her physical destruction in the way. She is now always on guard as am I, so nothing genuine transpires between us anyways. Maybe some day again, it will.
Stand firm, Ben, your position is reasoned and sane. No child is ever "born in the wrong body." Society needs to accept children expressing themselves as non-conforming without rushing them to a "gender clinic" and putting them on a conveyor belt to chemical and surgical castration.
Most people are too afraid to speak up when their views differ from their peers. We need more brave people to speak truth to this harmful propaganda, amplify the voices of detransitioners, gay and lesbian adults who grew out of gender dysphoria, and adults who have transitioned and are against transitioning children.
Honestly, I was shocked they published your essay. They are an extremely woke publication in my reading experience. I’m glad they did. This has struck me as conversion therapy for a long time now—internalized homophobia that Big Pharma is cashing in on.
They've been one of the few left-leaning publications offering other viewpoints on gender over the past few years, which is why I've been renewing my subscription.
Ben, your writing is elegant, courageous, and full of insight. As one of the parents who will never think that "gender medicine" could be a good solution for my child's (or any child's) challenges, I thank you.
"Do some growing." I smiled at this too. Looking forward to reading your Atlantic piece.
As the "girl-boy of Maple Street" (self-proclaimed at 8 as I wore my mother's dresses), I'm happy I grew to become a gay guy by the time I was 18, and happily so still at 68.
I really enjoyed dressing up in my mother's pretty dresses when I was young (although done in secret with a cousin or two watching on). I made plans to convert draperies into nuns' habits, and was considering the priesthood because they get to wear long dresses (aka cassocks). Then I turned 12 or so and that all melted away on its own. Haven't had the desire since, really. Not suppressing it, just not thinking about it. I don't know where the urge came from or where it went, but I'm glad I had it.
I remembering hearing this about Climate Change - that the children will guide us into a new green future. Part of me was relieved, because I sure as hell didn’t want to (I mean really, how is that even done?!). But then it made me sad and angry thinking about it. What a responsibility to put on children!! But this gender shit is so much worse and children are uniquely unable to understand what is really going on and what is at stake. Shame on all of us for letting this idea stand.
I enjoyed your article and respect your courage in saying what I think has been historically true. Transitioning young boys (girls) before they even really know themselves is unconscionable. I will stipulate that there may be a very small minority for whom early transition is appropriate. But this is not the case for the great majority of these children. The blowback you have received is simply totalitarian at its core. Thank you for your writing.
I agree, except, I don't think there is a small minority of children for whom transition is appropriate. From my observations and study, children who are gender questioning, gender dysphoric, or wishing they were the opposite sex; need absolute love and acceptance, not reinforcement that there is anything medically wrong with them. Transition should only be for fully informed, consenting adults only.
That's very fair. My point in even saying a small minority was to possibly keep the door open. But you're absolutely right that I don't even know how we would identify these kids. It's pretty clear that the current system is doing a terrible job of it- if it's even something that should be done.
I see this kind of response often. Genuinely curious to hear what characteristics would suggest “early transition” is appropriate? Is it someone like Ben who liked “girl things” and doesn’t align with acceptably regressive sex stereotypes? Is it a child who insists they are the opposite sex, because children are mystically wise about this one thing and never change? Is it good to sterilize and take complete future sexual function away from children under this one special evidence-free circumstance because it’s important to let the child lead and it’s healthy to pave the way for a lifetime fooling people into believing you’re something you’re not? Since no one changes sex and there’s a heavy medical burden associated with hormones, is it ethical to commit a child to a shortened lifespan and significantly increased risk of serious illness because of how they understood themselves and the world as a child?
The use of the word “transition” really does need to cease.
No child or adult “transitions” to the opposite or no sex; if “gender” exists, medical or surgical interventions don’t alter “gender”.
We must quit telling children that they can become “a boy” if they’re female; they objectively cannot.
Of course children cannot understand the reality and collateral consequences of medically and or surgically altering their physical body; but we can, and using terms like “transition” is misleading, and false.
Conservatives may argue and ridicule you over political or social differences, but real hate and personal destruction is almost the sole province of the deluded commie left.
When I was a kid, my parents never said "You aren't masculine enough. We are sending you to military school or enrolling you in football." They were perfectly fine with my more creative and less athletic personality. They likely had an inkling that I was gay. What happens when you have a parent who does try to FIX their little girl by making her wear dresses and makeup and having long hair and their little boy by forcing him to get into youth boxing or something. I feel like it's bad parenting but is it "abuse?" I'm still in the camp of there being infinite ways that boys and girls can be cisgender and just really really unusual, creative, rebellious, well queer and not move into that very small minority of trans who are just much happier not in the gender assigned at birth. I am ready to listen when someone wants to get evidence based with me on this subject. I react better to that then "these kids should avoid puberty if they want to or they will kill themselves."
Please consider not using terms like "cisgender". IMO, Gender conforming and gender non-conforming are better descriptors. The use of "cis" can make people think that you believe there is such a thing as "trans" -- that some people are "born in the wrong body" and need to have medical and surgical procedures to alter their bodies to become who they "really are". You can of course express yourself with whatever words you prefer, but please consider that you may be inadvertently buying into transgender ideology by using the language that it has foisted on us.
we are not really on the same page. To me clearly there are people who are far more happy and healthy living in a gender that is not the one assigned at birth. They are a relatively small minority. The rest of the people do not feel any rejection for the gender assigned at birth but to one extent or another express gender in a societally conforming or non-conforming way. There are those who define themselves as gender fluid or agender or non-binary - I do not have enough information to know whether these people are just people who feel sufficiently separated from gender expectations or they are a third category. there are those that I know who identify as non-binary that I cannot for the life of me notice anything non-conforming about them.
I’m a gay effeminate male. A homosexual, not queer. My same-sex attraction is just that, not a preference, not a social construct. The moral ambivalence
of Democrats on child gender affirming care is abhorrent to me. Radical alterations to your body and endocrine system are decisions to be made by adults and adults only. The idea of a gendered soul is as silly and medieval as the idea that the brain of a man is designed to be better at math than a women’s brain. Its just regressive, stereotyping made fashionable and cultish.
I don't think it's "normal" but even if so, how does that make it good, right, medically plausible, or ethical? This is a catastrophic abdication of responsibility. How does otherwise reasonable seeming guy NOT see that?
Your Atlantic piece was an act of real courage, not just because of what you said, but because of *where* you chose to say it. Walking into The Atlantic with a defense of effeminate boys as boys is like walking into the Vatican with a thesis on atheism. It’s one of the mouths of the machine you’re fighting.
You described the most visible layer of the problem with painful clarity:
- gender‑nonconforming gay kids being rebranded as “trans,”
- institutional LGBT org staff privately agreeing with you while publicly reciting the script,
- parents locked into an awful false binary: affirm or be cast as the villain who “drives your child to suicide.”
That’s the frontline. What I want to add is the missing piece: the depth of the institutional architecture sitting underneath the activists you’re seeing.
Think of this as a three‑layer system.
1. **Activist / cultural layer (the part you’re in direct contact with)**
This is the Bluesky dogpile, the Threads pile‑on, the people who call you a Nazi and demand you kill yourself, and the colleagues who whisper “I agree but I can’t say so.” They enforce the catechism: “innate gender identity,” “let the kids lead,” “affirmation or death.”
2. **Institutional / professional layer (the part that cages your friends in NGOs)**
This is where the slogans harden into rules:
- medical association “position statements” that turn a contested model into the only “ethical” standard,
- internal HR policies and DEI frameworks that quietly reclassify dissent as “harm,”
- big‑tent LGBT nonprofits whose funding, leadership networks, and legal strategies all depend on treating youth transition as a civil‑rights sacrament.
The people you talked to—the ones who say “I agree with you but if I speak I lose my job”—live here. Their fear isn’t just social; it’s professional and financial. They are not only afraid of Twitter; they are afraid of violating the doctrine that their institutions have already canonized.
3. **Formal power layer (the parts that make it law and policy)**
At the bottom are the mechanisms that give all of this teeth:
- licensing and credentialing regimes that can discipline clinicians who deviate,
- civil‑rights enforcement templates that treat “affirmation” as the only legally safe path for schools and clinics,
- funding criteria—from government grants to private foundations—that quietly require the entire apparatus of “gender‑affirming” practice as the price of entry.
By the time a parent meets a school counselor or pediatrician, all three layers are already stacked. “Let the kids lead” isn’t just a slogan anymore; it’s the path of least institutional resistance. Every adult in the chain has been taught that any other path is morally suspect, professionally dangerous, or legally risky.
What you did in The Atlantic is important precisely because you walked into one of the machine’s own narrative factories and refused the house story.
You told their core audience—educated, normie liberals who still vaguely believe in pluralism—that:
- effeminate boys are a normal male variant, not raw material for gender‑identity experimentation;
- activist language games are steamrolling gay kids and their parents;
- dissent exists inside the “LGBTQ+” world but has been forced underground.
That’s dangerous to the system because it exposes preference falsification. You’re not just disagreeing with the line; you’re revealing that many people *inside* the institutions don’t really believe the line either. Once ordinary readers grasp that there is real pluralism of belief beneath a monolithic public script, they naturally start asking, “If so many people privately feel uneasy, who exactly decided that this model is mandatory?”
That question leads them straight down into layer two and layer three—and that’s where this stops being a culture‑war skirmish and becomes an institutional story.
You put your finger on another crucial element: “let the kids lead.”
I’d restate your insight this way: the modern parent is being told that moral adulthood means abandoning moral adulthood. You are a good parent if you:
- suspend your own judgment about sex, development, and risk;
- sacralize your child’s momentary self‑description as a kind of oracle;
- outsource the hard decisions to clinicians and activists who will reassure you that you are Good and Loving if you comply.
This doesn’t just happen at the kitchen table. It’s baked into school policies, clinical guidelines, and media narratives that frame any parental skepticism as cruelty or bigotry. What looks like “letting the kids lead” is actually an adult self‑exoneration device:
“I didn’t choose this; my child told me, the experts confirmed it, the law backed them. I’m just following love.”
You’re right to say many of these parents will never be able to walk this back. They can’t, because to do so would require reclaiming the moral agency they were talked out of and admitting that, in the name of being “affirming,” they allowed their child to be used by a system they didn’t understand.
So I want to end with two compliments and a challenge.
- First, you went into one of the regime’s prestige publications and told a forbidden truth about gay boys and gender nonconformity. That is walking into the lions’ den.
- Second, you refused the easy temptation to make this purely a tribal story—“right good, left bad.” You asked explicitly about conformity and thought‑policing on the right, which is exactly the kind of symmetry‑checking that serious people do.
The challenge is this: in your next piece, name the deeper architecture.
Don’t just describe the activists and the fear inside NGOs; diagram the machine that makes their line feel inescapable:
- the professional bodies that turned speculation into dogma;
- the funding channels that reward one model and starve all alternatives;
- the legal and bureaucratic scripts that turn “affirmation” into the only safe answer for risk‑averse institutions.
You’ve already entered the lions’ den and lived. The next step is to show its readers that the lions aren’t just loud; they’re backed by a whole zoo of keepers, funders, and rule‑writers.
That would be awesome. Beyond Gender episode this week describes the machine we are against as parents. Lawyers wrote this up with the activists (keepers, funders and rule-writers) to infiltrate our schools, medical establishment, and laws.
The Atlantic piece was excellent. Right on target. I'm so sick of the trans ideology police. Recently an ACLU agent on the street seeking members was gobsmacked when I said the ACLU is one of the worse homophobic and misogynist forces in America.
Give them a diag sticker...
Did they ask you to explain and did you bother to waste time trying to get through to them?
No.
Not surprising. This bunch only ever shout their opinions, but never have the slightest curiosity about anything or anyone else.
Lots of gay men and lesbians say this in private but are too afraid to say it in public for fear of being labelled right-wing. Labelling is a shaming tactic used by people when they run out of arguments. A few days ago, I was discussing illegal immigration with a friend's son and he could not answer my arguments so he suddenly said, "Are you a Trumper?" as if it is impossible to agree with some policies of a government and disagree with others.
The only way to combat that stupidity is to ask why they believe it's better to be on the Left where they're racist, sexist, and believe in cutting the balls off of boys. Lay it out in a Ven diagram and have him write a compare-contrast essay.
Thank you for your excellent writing! Every time I see your name in my inbox I cannot wait to read what you have to say!I wish there was a way to abolish left and right. I am truly independent. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Because I believe in Christ, I have double the amount of friends on the right as I do the left. I can argue down and dirty with my friends on the right and we stay friends. I walk on eggshells with my friends on the left, which is shocking because my only real passionate belief is that we should not medicalize children. We are all born in the right body and we can express ourselves in that body in whatever way we want. You would think that was not political, that telling children to love the body that God gave them, and that they don't have to conform to a stereotype would be a loving thing to believe in. My other passion is no boys in girls sports because that is a giant step backwards for women's rights. I've had people block me for something that is so obviously true that I am willing to admit that I think you have to be stupid to believe boys playing in women's sports would be a good idea. Both of these beliefs, and all those you have expressed are not political. They are common sense beliefs. How can we get back to normal?? Thank you for your voice! I so appreciate you.
I'm similar in many ways -- socially liberal (but not "progressive"), fiscally conservative, politically homeless. I'm not religious, but some of my family are. I have friends and family on both sides of the aisle. I have found, like you, that I can discuss and debate with people on the right, and then we move on. But on the left, you have to be SO careful. Any hint that you don't subscribe to the narrative ends in a complete meltdown, often involving tears and hair-rending and name-calling. It's exhausting. I've determined it's far, far easier to be a semi-liberal amongst conservatives than to be a semi-conservative amongst progressives.
I agree with your assessments and characterizations wholeheartedly. We need more people with the knowledge, courage and critical thinking abilities you're displaying to speak up on this topic from a place of nuance and compassion.
I especially appreciate what you're saying about the plight of parents who have bought into the more extreme tenets of the ideology so thoroughly. I've often thought the same – that it would have to be nearly impossible to allow oneself to acknowledge such a grave mistake after going all in on early medicalization. What a gut-wrenching prospect for all involved.
As a parent, I cannot/will not live within a lie.....I've gotten estrangement.
I’m so sorry - this is a living hell for parents. Our eldest transitioned as an adult, we pushed back very little but as we had zero say or influence over the decision we couldn’t do much, besides advising therapy (we said we would pay, and would do family therapy.) Then when our youngest said she was really a boy, aged 10.5 we did resist and what a nightmare it’s been. We were investigated by child protection, cannot find a therapist (because it is against the law not to affirm a trans identity here) ended up letting her drop out of school because it seemed better than letting her spend all day in an environment where every adult tells her she’s really a boy… it’s not like parental resistance can have much impact once a child is over 12 in jurisdictions where you can lose custody for not affirming and where parental consent is not required if the doctor determines your child has capacity to consent to hormones.
What a horrible situation. All my best wishes ...
I'm sorry. It's easy for me to write about this, not being a parent. I can only imagine how difficult that is.
I'm so sorry.
Same. My ex wife and my extended family made the other choice, to “follow them over the waterfall”
Same here. I simply cannot. I have come to realize I cannot reach her anyways with any kind of reasoning towards her well being with the hold of her mental sanity, her career, or her physical destruction in the way. She is now always on guard as am I, so nothing genuine transpires between us anyways. Maybe some day again, it will.
Me too
Stand firm, Ben, your position is reasoned and sane. No child is ever "born in the wrong body." Society needs to accept children expressing themselves as non-conforming without rushing them to a "gender clinic" and putting them on a conveyor belt to chemical and surgical castration.
Most people are too afraid to speak up when their views differ from their peers. We need more brave people to speak truth to this harmful propaganda, amplify the voices of detransitioners, gay and lesbian adults who grew out of gender dysphoria, and adults who have transitioned and are against transitioning children.
Honestly, I was shocked they published your essay. They are an extremely woke publication in my reading experience. I’m glad they did. This has struck me as conversion therapy for a long time now—internalized homophobia that Big Pharma is cashing in on.
They've been one of the few left-leaning publications offering other viewpoints on gender over the past few years, which is why I've been renewing my subscription.
Ben, your writing is elegant, courageous, and full of insight. As one of the parents who will never think that "gender medicine" could be a good solution for my child's (or any child's) challenges, I thank you.
"Do some growing." I smiled at this too. Looking forward to reading your Atlantic piece.
As the "girl-boy of Maple Street" (self-proclaimed at 8 as I wore my mother's dresses), I'm happy I grew to become a gay guy by the time I was 18, and happily so still at 68.
I really enjoyed dressing up in my mother's pretty dresses when I was young (although done in secret with a cousin or two watching on). I made plans to convert draperies into nuns' habits, and was considering the priesthood because they get to wear long dresses (aka cassocks). Then I turned 12 or so and that all melted away on its own. Haven't had the desire since, really. Not suppressing it, just not thinking about it. I don't know where the urge came from or where it went, but I'm glad I had it.
“Let the kids lead” is utterly ass-backwards. It’s a complete abdication of adult responsibility, as you say.
I remembering hearing this about Climate Change - that the children will guide us into a new green future. Part of me was relieved, because I sure as hell didn’t want to (I mean really, how is that even done?!). But then it made me sad and angry thinking about it. What a responsibility to put on children!! But this gender shit is so much worse and children are uniquely unable to understand what is really going on and what is at stake. Shame on all of us for letting this idea stand.
I enjoyed your article and respect your courage in saying what I think has been historically true. Transitioning young boys (girls) before they even really know themselves is unconscionable. I will stipulate that there may be a very small minority for whom early transition is appropriate. But this is not the case for the great majority of these children. The blowback you have received is simply totalitarian at its core. Thank you for your writing.
I agree, except, I don't think there is a small minority of children for whom transition is appropriate. From my observations and study, children who are gender questioning, gender dysphoric, or wishing they were the opposite sex; need absolute love and acceptance, not reinforcement that there is anything medically wrong with them. Transition should only be for fully informed, consenting adults only.
That's very fair. My point in even saying a small minority was to possibly keep the door open. But you're absolutely right that I don't even know how we would identify these kids. It's pretty clear that the current system is doing a terrible job of it- if it's even something that should be done.
I see this kind of response often. Genuinely curious to hear what characteristics would suggest “early transition” is appropriate? Is it someone like Ben who liked “girl things” and doesn’t align with acceptably regressive sex stereotypes? Is it a child who insists they are the opposite sex, because children are mystically wise about this one thing and never change? Is it good to sterilize and take complete future sexual function away from children under this one special evidence-free circumstance because it’s important to let the child lead and it’s healthy to pave the way for a lifetime fooling people into believing you’re something you’re not? Since no one changes sex and there’s a heavy medical burden associated with hormones, is it ethical to commit a child to a shortened lifespan and significantly increased risk of serious illness because of how they understood themselves and the world as a child?
The use of the word “transition” really does need to cease.
No child or adult “transitions” to the opposite or no sex; if “gender” exists, medical or surgical interventions don’t alter “gender”.
We must quit telling children that they can become “a boy” if they’re female; they objectively cannot.
Of course children cannot understand the reality and collateral consequences of medically and or surgically altering their physical body; but we can, and using terms like “transition” is misleading, and false.
Conservatives may argue and ridicule you over political or social differences, but real hate and personal destruction is almost the sole province of the deluded commie left.
When I was a kid, my parents never said "You aren't masculine enough. We are sending you to military school or enrolling you in football." They were perfectly fine with my more creative and less athletic personality. They likely had an inkling that I was gay. What happens when you have a parent who does try to FIX their little girl by making her wear dresses and makeup and having long hair and their little boy by forcing him to get into youth boxing or something. I feel like it's bad parenting but is it "abuse?" I'm still in the camp of there being infinite ways that boys and girls can be cisgender and just really really unusual, creative, rebellious, well queer and not move into that very small minority of trans who are just much happier not in the gender assigned at birth. I am ready to listen when someone wants to get evidence based with me on this subject. I react better to that then "these kids should avoid puberty if they want to or they will kill themselves."
Please consider not using terms like "cisgender". IMO, Gender conforming and gender non-conforming are better descriptors. The use of "cis" can make people think that you believe there is such a thing as "trans" -- that some people are "born in the wrong body" and need to have medical and surgical procedures to alter their bodies to become who they "really are". You can of course express yourself with whatever words you prefer, but please consider that you may be inadvertently buying into transgender ideology by using the language that it has foisted on us.
we are not really on the same page. To me clearly there are people who are far more happy and healthy living in a gender that is not the one assigned at birth. They are a relatively small minority. The rest of the people do not feel any rejection for the gender assigned at birth but to one extent or another express gender in a societally conforming or non-conforming way. There are those who define themselves as gender fluid or agender or non-binary - I do not have enough information to know whether these people are just people who feel sufficiently separated from gender expectations or they are a third category. there are those that I know who identify as non-binary that I cannot for the life of me notice anything non-conforming about them.
Sex isn’t ’assigned at birth’ it is observed. We are born male or female and remain thus our entire lives. Surgery and hormones so not change our sex.
3 questions. 1) what is "gender"? 2) what is "gender identity"? 3) what is the difference?
I’m a gay effeminate male. A homosexual, not queer. My same-sex attraction is just that, not a preference, not a social construct. The moral ambivalence
of Democrats on child gender affirming care is abhorrent to me. Radical alterations to your body and endocrine system are decisions to be made by adults and adults only. The idea of a gendered soul is as silly and medieval as the idea that the brain of a man is designed to be better at math than a women’s brain. Its just regressive, stereotyping made fashionable and cultish.
The edifice crumbles if the gnosis of "children know who they are" is rejected.
I think that's at heart the contempt and loathing aimed at you that your article for a huge readership surfaced.
Here is what I mean:
https://x.com/benryanwriter/status/2029346090709876836
I don't think it's "normal" but even if so, how does that make it good, right, medically plausible, or ethical? This is a catastrophic abdication of responsibility. How does otherwise reasonable seeming guy NOT see that?
Ben,
Your Atlantic piece was an act of real courage, not just because of what you said, but because of *where* you chose to say it. Walking into The Atlantic with a defense of effeminate boys as boys is like walking into the Vatican with a thesis on atheism. It’s one of the mouths of the machine you’re fighting.
You described the most visible layer of the problem with painful clarity:
- gender‑nonconforming gay kids being rebranded as “trans,”
- institutional LGBT org staff privately agreeing with you while publicly reciting the script,
- parents locked into an awful false binary: affirm or be cast as the villain who “drives your child to suicide.”
That’s the frontline. What I want to add is the missing piece: the depth of the institutional architecture sitting underneath the activists you’re seeing.
Think of this as a three‑layer system.
1. **Activist / cultural layer (the part you’re in direct contact with)**
This is the Bluesky dogpile, the Threads pile‑on, the people who call you a Nazi and demand you kill yourself, and the colleagues who whisper “I agree but I can’t say so.” They enforce the catechism: “innate gender identity,” “let the kids lead,” “affirmation or death.”
2. **Institutional / professional layer (the part that cages your friends in NGOs)**
This is where the slogans harden into rules:
- medical association “position statements” that turn a contested model into the only “ethical” standard,
- internal HR policies and DEI frameworks that quietly reclassify dissent as “harm,”
- big‑tent LGBT nonprofits whose funding, leadership networks, and legal strategies all depend on treating youth transition as a civil‑rights sacrament.
The people you talked to—the ones who say “I agree with you but if I speak I lose my job”—live here. Their fear isn’t just social; it’s professional and financial. They are not only afraid of Twitter; they are afraid of violating the doctrine that their institutions have already canonized.
3. **Formal power layer (the parts that make it law and policy)**
At the bottom are the mechanisms that give all of this teeth:
- licensing and credentialing regimes that can discipline clinicians who deviate,
- civil‑rights enforcement templates that treat “affirmation” as the only legally safe path for schools and clinics,
- funding criteria—from government grants to private foundations—that quietly require the entire apparatus of “gender‑affirming” practice as the price of entry.
By the time a parent meets a school counselor or pediatrician, all three layers are already stacked. “Let the kids lead” isn’t just a slogan anymore; it’s the path of least institutional resistance. Every adult in the chain has been taught that any other path is morally suspect, professionally dangerous, or legally risky.
What you did in The Atlantic is important precisely because you walked into one of the machine’s own narrative factories and refused the house story.
You told their core audience—educated, normie liberals who still vaguely believe in pluralism—that:
- effeminate boys are a normal male variant, not raw material for gender‑identity experimentation;
- activist language games are steamrolling gay kids and their parents;
- dissent exists inside the “LGBTQ+” world but has been forced underground.
That’s dangerous to the system because it exposes preference falsification. You’re not just disagreeing with the line; you’re revealing that many people *inside* the institutions don’t really believe the line either. Once ordinary readers grasp that there is real pluralism of belief beneath a monolithic public script, they naturally start asking, “If so many people privately feel uneasy, who exactly decided that this model is mandatory?”
That question leads them straight down into layer two and layer three—and that’s where this stops being a culture‑war skirmish and becomes an institutional story.
You put your finger on another crucial element: “let the kids lead.”
I’d restate your insight this way: the modern parent is being told that moral adulthood means abandoning moral adulthood. You are a good parent if you:
- suspend your own judgment about sex, development, and risk;
- sacralize your child’s momentary self‑description as a kind of oracle;
- outsource the hard decisions to clinicians and activists who will reassure you that you are Good and Loving if you comply.
This doesn’t just happen at the kitchen table. It’s baked into school policies, clinical guidelines, and media narratives that frame any parental skepticism as cruelty or bigotry. What looks like “letting the kids lead” is actually an adult self‑exoneration device:
“I didn’t choose this; my child told me, the experts confirmed it, the law backed them. I’m just following love.”
You’re right to say many of these parents will never be able to walk this back. They can’t, because to do so would require reclaiming the moral agency they were talked out of and admitting that, in the name of being “affirming,” they allowed their child to be used by a system they didn’t understand.
So I want to end with two compliments and a challenge.
- First, you went into one of the regime’s prestige publications and told a forbidden truth about gay boys and gender nonconformity. That is walking into the lions’ den.
- Second, you refused the easy temptation to make this purely a tribal story—“right good, left bad.” You asked explicitly about conformity and thought‑policing on the right, which is exactly the kind of symmetry‑checking that serious people do.
The challenge is this: in your next piece, name the deeper architecture.
Don’t just describe the activists and the fear inside NGOs; diagram the machine that makes their line feel inescapable:
- the professional bodies that turned speculation into dogma;
- the funding channels that reward one model and starve all alternatives;
- the legal and bureaucratic scripts that turn “affirmation” into the only safe answer for risk‑averse institutions.
You’ve already entered the lions’ den and lived. The next step is to show its readers that the lions aren’t just loud; they’re backed by a whole zoo of keepers, funders, and rule‑writers.
That would be awesome. Beyond Gender episode this week describes the machine we are against as parents. Lawyers wrote this up with the activists (keepers, funders and rule-writers) to infiltrate our schools, medical establishment, and laws.